How has market cap got anything to do with monetizing the site?
You're suggesting that if Google was smaller then that would make this site more appealing to advertisers? That having more advertising companies would make this site more valuable?
Sure, I think we can agree that at Google scale the business interactions with me as a potential supplier are automated and soulless.
On the other hand there are several large supermarket chains where I live, and while I have a small artisinal cheese making hobby, so far my interactions with any of them to put it on their shelves have been equally soulless.
Perhaps in this context the issue is not monopoly, but rather that I have nothing of value to offer them.
I cannot tell you how much I despise this idea that a company can be too big to talk to their customers/partners/products.
If your relationship to a company is so worthless that they can't spend 5 minutes of an employee's day talking to you, then what value could they possibly be providing you?
In this situation it's not "google providing the site owner with value."
It's the site owner providing Google with value (that they want Google to pay for).
It's not incumbent for companies to interact with every person who thinks they _should_ be a supplier to said company. I get people cold calling me every day wanting to be my supplier. I absolutely ignore most of that.
In this case Google's algorithm did not ignore the potential supplier. It evaluated the site and sent a reply saying basically "thanks, but no thanks".
Now, I understand your gripe - an algorithm did this, not a human. But this has been the Google way since long before they were a fifth of this size. So it's not like a competitor changes Google's way of doing business.
And Google's way is not a secret. If you don't like it, then don't have a business relationship with them (as a supplier or customer.)
But let's imagine you're CEO of option 2. What do you think you might do differently which would make this site, in its original form, appealing to advertise on?
Having multiple ad companies doesn't sound like an improvement when the advertising space on offer doesn't seem to be good for advertising.
Or to put it another way, do you feel this space does have value, but Google is leaving that value on the table? If so, why hasn't some other company taken advantage of this value?
Having only one ad network means that the monopolist holds all the cards. They can extract huge margins from advertisers while passing on very little to websites. And they can make all the rules. Websites have to comply no questions asked. If the monopolist closes your account it may be the end of the road for your business.
That said, Google is not actually a monopolist in online advertising. There's also Facebook, Amazon and a couple of smaller ones like X and Microsoft. The problem is that the big ones appear to have cleanly divvied up the space without stepping on each others' toes much.
For instance, Amazon does compete with Google for advertisers' money, but it has very little effect on the choice a website like Apportionment Calculator has as they can't sell their site on Amazon.
Similarly, I'm not sure how much of a competition Facebook Audience Network actually is for AdSense. I think it's mostly interesting for sites that have a significant Facebook/Instagram presence. Again, not much of a choice for small web apps like Apportionment Calculator.
>The real complaint is that Google did not consider the original site to be "ad supplier worthy".
No, that was not the complaint. The complaint is that Google demanded changes that made the site worse for users. These changes are clearly meant to optimise ad revenue.
Google is in a position of power that allows them to make these demands. More competition between ad networks would reduce the power of each individual ad network and give publishers more negotiating power.
>As you say, there are other advertising players - but if none of them see value (in the original site) then maybe that's telling us something?
As I understand it, no other ad networks have even seen the site. Amazon and Facebook are clearly unsuitable. Microsoft may have been worth a shot. For this type of site I think Google has a nearly complete monopoly.
Their point is that if there were more ad companies then the chance they would have allowed the site to go up as the original. Not to 100% of course but drastically higher than 0%
The new unneeded content doesn't make the site more appealing to advertise on, instead it exists purely to satisfy arbitrary standards set by Adsense. I feel you've missed the point of the article
I get it. The unnecessary content games the Adsense algorithm, convincing it that the site now has value as a "place for adverts".
That, in itself, is not actually a win. There would need to be traffic, clicks on ads, and so on to be a win.
There's no evidence (either way, it's simply not mentioned) if the site actually makes any revenue from the ads that are now on it. Perhaps the automated Adsense algorithm was correct "the original site isn't a good ad site" - and the mistake is that it can't see what "seems" to be true to us, which is that the new site is no better.
A calculator sounds like a pretty good place to advertise actually. Any tool where a user spends a lot of time instead of rapidly scrolling through it could be decent ad space.
Sure, a calculator. But this isn't really a general purpose calculator. It's a simple question/answer of "number of votes in this district". How long honestly are you going to spend on a site like that? It sounds to me like a very long-tail question. (Admittedly, I've never even felt the urge to ask the question much less search for a web site to answer it.)
> Can you elaborate on what the value of the site might be, to say a competitive advertiser,
Lots of ads don't care very much what site they are on, even if the purpose of the site is somehow unknowable.
But google knows the traffic it sends there. And it's able to show ads alongside those search results. Why can't it put similar ads on the page?
And apparently adding the dumb text unlocked ads, so there's the value being put to work. The old site has the same value, google just refused to recognize it.
> how that value might be unlocked?
Uhh, put ads on the site and the ads will get valuable views.
I don't know what you're asking here.
Or are you asking how competition between advertising networks would help? You wouldn't see several big networks in healthy competition all having the same bad requirements that a superpower can get away with.
I think that if you had 5 advertising networks, they'd all operate the same.
I think Google (probably rightly) sees no value in this site from an advertising point of view. I think if there were 5 advertising aggregators they'd say the same.
You're suggesting Google is leaving money on the table, not just for this site, but a lot of others like it. I'm suggesting that if this category of site had value to an advertising aggregator, someone would be leveraging it (and that someone eould likely be Google.)
>I think Google (probably rightly) sees no value in this site from an advertising point of view [...] You're suggesting Google is leaving money on the table
What makes you say these things? Google isn't walking away from a deal here. They are simply imposing their own rules knowing that the publisher has very little choice but to comply. Google probably knows that the enshitified version of the site makes them more money, but that doesn't mean a cleaner site has no value. It's just not maximising advertising income at the cost of user experience.
If there were several ad networks competing for this kind of business then each of them would have less power to impose their rules. Their margins would be far lower. Advertisers would pay less and/or sites would be making more money. And sites might have a choice to prioritise user experience over maximising ad revenue.
The point is that if google ads were busted up into more corporations it would be more competitive and there would be other ad companies that would offer superior options.
You're suggesting that if Google was smaller then that would make this site more appealing to advertisers? That having more advertising companies would make this site more valuable?